Of the two dozen people who spoke at a public hearing for the parking plan yesterday, all but two opposed the plan.
Much of the opposition came from people who said they were worried parking will be expensive, but the city manager’s office says it will take three years for
parking rates to go up in Downtown and six years for rates to go up in neighborhoods after an initial hike
to 75 cents. CityBeat covered the parking plan in detail here.

Cincinnati officials are now saying that a freestanding restroom could cost as low as $35,000.
Officials say the public restroom is needed to accommodate growing
activity and population in Over-the-Rhine and Downtown. Some critics
were initially worried that the facility would cost $100,000.

Cincinnati’s Horseshoe Casino will partner up
with the Cincinnati Police Department to keep out cheats and prevent
theft. The casino will also have advanced surveillance equipment,
allowing them to detect anyone around the casino before they even get
into the building. It may seem like a lot, but casinos do tend to
attract cheaters and other troublemakers, according to Ohio Casino
Control Commission Director of Enforcement Karen Huey. The Horseshoe
Casino is set to open March 4.

A report from the Governors Highway Safety Association found more teen drivers died in crashes this year than the last two,
and some officials fear wireless devices may be a leading cause. In
Ohio, the six-month grace period for the teen wireless ban expires
Friday, which will allow police officers to issue tickets instead of
warnings to teenagers using any wireless devices while driving.

Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal would cut back a state-funded college internship program, which awarded $11 million to universities around the state.

The University of Cincinnati got a $2.3 million grant
from the National Cancer Institute to train cancer researchers. “Our
emphasis is on training the next generation of cancer researchers to
translate basic science discoveries into improved patient care,” Susan
Waltz, co-principal investigator of the grant and professor of cancer
biology at the UC College of Medicine, said in a statement.

Food deserts are a big problem for many of Hamilton
County’s impoverished families, but ongoing research suggests officials may
be overlooking mobility when attempting to pinpoint neighborhoods that lack access to healthy foods.

University of Cincinnati professor Michael Widener is
heading research that looks into how mobility can alter perceptions
about food deserts. So far, his findings have suggested that some people
may have access to healthy foods throughout their daily commute despite
being classified as living in a food desert.

Widener explains the research is necessary to make
identifying food deserts more accurate. “In previous work and when I was
doing my dissertation, I was noticing how a lot of food desert research
failed to take into account the dynamics of everyday urban life,” he
says. The observation led Widener to incorporate those dynamics,
particularly people’s movements throughout the day, to see how they
impact people’s access to food.

Still, Widener cautions that his findings
don’t dismiss the problems caused by food deserts: “Of
course, there are a lot of assumptions being made, like are (these
commuters) totally drained after work? The biggest (assumption) is of course that
(someone has) a car.”

Widener says his findings could impact how public
officials approach food desert policies. He points to potential stopgap
measures, such as better access to public transportation, that could
alleviate the pains of living in a food desert while a more permanent
solution is put in place. Widener argues these policies could make financial sense: Considering
how many potential costs a food desert can bring on a community, it
might be cheaper for a city to build a bus route and encourage better
ways to load groceries into buses. Widener knows these aren’t perfect
solutions, but he thinks they could provide some aid in a bogged-down
political climate that often results in sluggish policy changes.

There is a caveat: Widener acknowledges research
has so far been inconsistent as to whether access to healthier food
actually leads to healthier results. Eventually, he wants to research
what actually causes healthier results and whether broader economic
factors, such as poverty, play a more important role. That could give officials a clearer picture on which policies work and which don’t.

The first part of Widener’s research came out in a January paper that looked at auto
commuters’ access to food, and the next part will look at public transportation’s impact. The research project is using local transportation data from The Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana
Regional Council of Governments.

Food deserts are neighborhoods that
lack access to fresh, healthy foods. In Hamilton County, many of the
identified food deserts are in neighborhoods on the city’s west side,
including Price Hill and Queensgate. Cincinnati’s food deserts are just
one problem being addressed by Plan Cincinnati, the city’s first master
plan in more than 20 years (“Core Future,” issue of Sept. 5).

Babies in Cincinnati don't get the same chance to celebrate a first birthday as do babies in other areas across the country, and Mayor Mark Mallory has entered Cincinnati into a contest that could change that. Today, a proposal Mallory submitted was selected as one of 20 finalists from more than 305 cities in the Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayors Challenge, a nationwide competition designed to propel mayors from around the country to dream up innovative solutions to urban problems and improve city life. It's partnered with The Huffington Post to give readers the chance to explore each finalists' proposal and vote on their favorite. Each city's proposal tackles a different flaw — ours, perhaps, is among the most pressing of the bunch: dealing with alarmingly high infant mortality rates.

Infant mortality rates are typically measured by the number of deaths of babies under
one year of age per 1,000 live births. Infant mortality rates in Cincinnati are at 13.6; the national average is 6 — less than half that.

Mallory puts the issue in perspective on the proposal's page onThe Huffington Post: "In Cincinnati, we have
had more infant deaths in recent years than victims of homicide. Our
community, justifiably, invests millions of dollars, immense political
capital, and large amounts of media attention in reducing our homicide
rate. It's time to start doing the same for our infant mortality rate."

Mallory's proposalwould create an Infant Vitality Surveillance Network, which, according to a press release sent out by Mallory's office, has already been launched via a pilot version with significant success. Here's how it works: When a woman finds out she's pregnant, she's enrolled in First Steps, a care program that maintains a secure database of new mothers and monitors pregnancies.

The competition garnered applications from 305 cities, and Cincinnati was one of 20 finalists selected. If recognized, Cincinnati could win a $5 million prize or one of four $1 million prizes to help implement and sustain the Infant Mortality Network.

"City after city deals with this issue, but in Cincinnati, we are dealing with an infant mortality rate that is twice the national average. And half of those deaths occur in just five zip codes. So we know exactly where the problem is, we know exactly what community is having the issue. ... We're really trying to create a program in Cincinnati that can be replicated all across the country. So that in city after city, they can see the same type of success that we are seeing — continuing to drive that infant mortality rate down so that we are saving babies' lives,"Mallory says in the Mayors Challenge finalist video below.

According to data from 2007-09 from the Cincinnati Health Department, the five zip codes experiencing the highest infant mortality rates are: 45219 (30.4), 45202 (24.2), 45246 (20.7), 45203 (20.1) and 45214 (19.2). For more detailed information from the Cincinnati Health Department, click here.

Watch the full finalist video:

Right now, you can vote for the best proposal on The Huffington Post. This November, a team assembled by each city will travel to New York for a conference, where teams will work together and improve their ideas. Winners will be announced in spring 2014.